In A Starship's Wake

Chapter 19: Phantom Signal

Joseph sighed as he reassembled the rifle he had just finished cleaning. Fifteen hidden compartments in the walls and bulkheads scattered around their ship held a total of fifty-five weapons, an assortment of rifles, pistols and shotguns. The compartments were strategically placed so that no matter where you were there were weapons at hand if the ship was suddenly attacked. It was also a lot of weapons to maintain; they didn't do you much good if they weren't working when an attack happened.

"Cleaning" was a somewhat misleading term, Joseph mused as he locked the magazine back into the rifle and set the safety. Gauss weapons were the standard among spacefaring nations and represented all of the concealed weapons on Garden Variety Animal. Firing them didn't produce much in the way of grit and grime to coat their innards, so maintenance was more about checking the functionality of the electronics. It was still called "cleaning" because that was what the process had always been called.

Tyrone walked into the workroom as Joseph turned his attention to the pistol. The ship had two such rooms, exactly the same size, just in front of the cargo bay. This one, on the starboard side, served as an office for both of them. Each had a desk against the fore wall, and Joseph was seated at a large table against the aft wall. The other workroom was casually labeled "storage" by the two. More accurately, it was where the junk that didn't really belong anywhere else in the ship accumulated.

"Is it that time again?" Tyrone gestured to the weapons.

Joseph nodded. "Once a month. It's not something we want to get behind on." He pushed the retaining pin out of the weapon and set it carefully on the table.

"Nope, it's not." The pair had been attacked by pirates twice since they started operating. Neither incident had gotten as far as repelling boarders, but it was plenty of motivation to take the maintenance schedule seriously. Even if they operated solely inside Teton Sector space, a freighter could expect a brush with pirates for every ten years in operation.

"I'm on compartment eleven, if you feel like helping." Joseph gave his partner a mock-stern look.

Tyrone narrowed his eyes and tilted his head to one side. "Which end did you start at?"

Joseph laughed and set the pistol's slide on the table. "I started on fifteen." He gestured to the check sheet in front of him that listed the compartments. "You would have noticed before now if I'd started with the cockpit."

"No kidding. Also, you would have made me help by now." Tyrone ambled over to his computer and looked at it, but didn't wake it up. "I think we're still booked on cargo for another month or more. I guess I don't have anything better to do. I'll grab comp..."

Tyrone was interrupted by a loud klaxon, and several red lights mounted in the ceiling began flashing slowly. The same thing would be happening all over the ship. Both looked around in confusion. Were they under attack? Joseph reached for the slide to put the pistol back together, then stopped as he recognized the alarm pattern. The ship hadn't detected an attack, it had picked up a distress signal.

Joseph saw understanding dawn on his partner's face as Tyrone made the same connection. Tyrone opened his mouth, but before he said anything the klaxon stopped, cutting off mid-squeal. The lights stopped flashing a moment after. The whole alarm had lasted only a few seconds.

"What in God's great galaxies?" Tyrone gazed up at the lights, scratching his head.

"That's not supposed to happen," Joseph agreed. "Maybe a computer glitch?" He rose as well, dropping the pieces of the pistol on the table.

"It's never happened before, why would it happen now?" He wavered on the edge of the door. "We'd better check it out." He swung into the corridor, Joseph one step behind. "If a system error set it off, it should have kept going until we reset it."